Cautiously he began to climb out on to the window-sill; first one foot and then the other hung over the edge. He sat there, staring down into black space beneath.
For a minute he hesitated; despair rushed over him in a wave; he could never take that awful jump into emptiness and darkness. It was impossible. Better be a prisoner for ever than risk so fearful a plunge. He felt cold, weak, frightened, and made a half-movement back into the room. The wings caught somehow between his legs and nearly flung him headlong into the yard.
“Jimbo! I’m waiting for you!” came at that moment in a faint cry from the stars, and the sound gave him just the impetus he needed before it was too late. He could not disappoint her — his faithful friend. Such a thing was impossible.
He stood upright on the ledge, his hands clutching the window-sash behind, balancing as best he could. He clenched his fists, drew a deep, long breath, and jumped upwards and forwards into the air.
Up rushed the darkness with a shriek; the air whistled in his ears; he dropped at fearful speed into nothingness.
At first everything was forgotten — wings, instructions, warnings, and all. He even forgot to open his wings at all, and in another second he would have been dashed upon the hard paving-stones of the courtyard where his great enemy lay waiting to seize him.
But just in the nick of time he remembered, and the long hours of practice bore fruit. Out flew the great red wings in a tremendous sweep on both sides of him, and he began to strike with every atom of strength he possessed. He had dropped to within six feet of the ground; but at once the strokes began to tell, and oh, magical sensation! he felt himself rising easily, lightly, swiftly.
A very slight effort of those big wings would have been sufficient to lift him out of danger, but in his terror and excitement he quite miscalculated their power, and in a single moment he was far out of reach of the dangerous yard and anything it contained. But the mad rush of it all made his head swim; he felt dizzy and confused, and, instead of clearing the wall, he landed on the top of it and clung to the crumbling coping with hands and feet, panting and breathless.
The dizziness was only momentary, however. In less than a minute he was on his feet and in the act of taking his second leap into space. This time it came more easily. He dropped, and the field swung up to meet him. Soon the powerful strokes of his wings drove him at great speed upwards, and he bounded ever higher towards the stars.
Overhead, the governess hovered like an immense bird, and as he rose up he caught the sound of her wings beating the air, while far beneath him, he heard with a shudder a voice like the rushing of a great river. It made him increase his pace, and in another minute he found himself among the little whirlwinds that raced about from the beating of Miss Lake’s great wings.
“Well done!” cried the delighted governess. “Safe at last! Now we can fly to our heart’s content!”
Jimbo flew up alongside, and together they dashed forward into the night.
CHAPTER XI. THE FIRST FLIGHT
There was not much talking at first. The stress of conflicting emotions was so fierce that the words choked themselves in his throat, and the desire for utterance found its only vent in hard breathing.
The intoxication of rapid motion carried him away headlong in more senses than one. At first he felt as if he never would be able to keep up; then it seemed as if he never would get down again. For with wings it is almost easier to rise than to fall, and a first flight is, before anything else, a series of vivid and audacious surprises.
For a long time Jimbo was so dizzy with excitement and the novelty of the sensation that he forgot his deliverer altogether.
And what a flight it was! Instead of the steady race of the carrier pigeon, or of the rooks homeward bound at evening, it was the see-saw motion of the wren’s swinging journey across the lawn; only heavier, faster, and with more terrific impetus. Up and down, each time with a rise and fall of twenty feet, he careered, whistling through the summer night; at the drop of each curve, so low that the scents of dewy grass rose into his face; at the crest of it, so high that the trees and hedges often became mere blots upon the dark surface of the earth.
The fields rushed by beneath him; the white roads flashed past like streaks of snow. Sometimes he shot across sheets of water and felt the cooler air strike his cheeks; sometimes over sheltered meadows, where the sunshine had slept all day and the air was still soft and warm; on and on, as easily as rain dropping from the sky, or wind rushing earthwards from between the clouds. Everything flew past him at an astonishing rate — everything but the bright stars that gazed calmly down overhead; and when he looked up and saw their steadfastness it helped to keep within bounds the fine alarm of this first excursion into the great vault of the sky.
“Gently, child!” gasped Miss Lake behind him. “We shall never keep it up at this rate.”
“Oh! but it’s so wonderful,” he cried, drawing in the air loudly between his teeth, and shaking his wings rapidly like a hawk before it drops.
The pace slackened a little and the girl drew up alongside. For some time they flew forward together in silence.
They had been skirting the edge of a wood, when suddenly the trees fell away and Jimbo gave a scream and rose fifty feet into the air with a single bound. Straight in front of him loomed an immense, glaring disc that seemed to swim suddenly up into the sky above the trees. It hung there before his eyes and dazzled him.
“It’s only the moon,” cried Miss Lake from below.
Jimbo dropped through the air to her side again with a gasp.
“I thought it was a big hole in the sky with fire rushing through,” he explained breathlessly.
The boy stared, full of wonder and delight, at the huge flaming circle that seemed to fill half the heavens in front of him.
“Look out!” cried the governess, seizing his hand.
Whish! whew! whirr! A large bird whipped past them like some winged imp of darkness, vanishing among the trees far below. There would certainly have been a collision but for the girl’s energetic interference.
“You must be on the look-out for these night-birds,” she said. “They fly so unexpectedly, and, of course, they don’t see us properly. Telegraph wires and church steeples are bad too, but then we shan’t fly over cities much. Keep a good height, it’s safer.”
They altered their course a little, flying at a different angle, so that the moon no longer dazzled them. Steering came quite easily by turning the body, and Jimbo still led the way, the governess following heavily and with a mighty business of wings and flapping.
It was something to remember, the glory of that first journey through the air. Sixty miles an hour, and scarcely an effort! Skimming the long ridges of the hills and rushing through the pure air of mountain tops; threading the star-beams; bathing themselves from head to foot in an ocean of cool, clean wind; swimming on the waves of viewless currents — currents warmed only by the magic of the stars, and kissed by the burning lips of flying meteors.
Far below them the moonlight touched the fields with silver and the murmur of the world rose faintly to their ears, trembling, as it were, with the inarticulate dreams of millions. Everywhere about them thrilled and sang the unspeakable power of the night. The mystery of its great heart seemed laid bare before them.
It was like a wonder-journey in some Eastern fairy tale. Sometimes they passed through zones of sweeter air, perfumed with the scents of hay and wild flowers; at others, the fresh, damp odour of ploughed fields rose up to them; or, again, they went spinning over leagues of forest where the tree-tops stretched beneath them like the surface of a wide, green sea, sleeping in the moonlight. And, when they crossed open water, the stars shone reflected in their faces; and all the while the wings, whirring and purring softly through the darkness, made pleasant music in their ears.
“I’m tired,” declared Jimbo presently.
“Then we’ll go down and rest,” said his breathless companion with obvious relief.
She showed him how to spread his wings, sloping them towards the ground at an angle that enabled him to shoot rapidly downwards, at the same time regulating his speed by the least upward tilt. It was a glorious motion, without effort or difficulty, though the pace made it hard to keep the eyes open, and breathing became almost impossible. They dropped to within ten feet of the ground and then shot forward again.
But, while the boy was watching his companion’s movements, and paying too little attention to his own, there rose suddenly before him out of the ground a huge, bulky form of something — and crash — he flew headlong into it.
Fortunately it was only a haystack; but the speed at which he was going lodged his head several inches under the thatch, whence he projected horizontally into space, feet, arms, and wings gyrating furiously. The governess, however, soon released him with much laughter, and they dropped down into the fallen hay upon the ground with no worse result than a shaking.
“Oh, what a lark!” he cried, shaking the hay out of his feathers, and rubbing his head rather ruefully.
“Except that larks are hardly night-birds,” she laughed, helping him.
They settled with folded wings in the shadow of the haystack; and the big moon, peeping over the edge at them, must have surely wondered to see such a funny couple, in such a place, and at such an hour.
“Mushrooms!” suddenly cried the governess, springing to her feet. “There must be lots in this field. I’ll go and pick some while you rest a bit.”
Off she went, trapesing over the field in the moonlight, her wings folded behind her, her body bent a little forward as she searched, and in ten minutes she came back with her hands full. That was undoubtedly the time to enjoy mushrooms at their best, with the dew still on their tight little jackets, and the sweet odour of the earth caught under their umbrellas.
Soon they were all eaten, and Jimbo was lying back on a pile of hay, his shoulders against the wall of the stack, and his wings gathered round him like a warm cloak of feathers. He felt cosy and dozy, full of mushrooms inside and covered with hay and feathers outside. The governess had once told him that a sort of open-air sleep sometimes came after a long flight. It was, of course, not a real sleep, but a state in which everything about oneself is forgotten; no dreams, no movement, no falling asleep and waking up in the ordinary sense, but a condition of deep repose in which recuperation is very great.
Jimbo would have been greatly interested, no doubt, to know that his real body on the bed had also just been receiving nourishment, and was now passing into a quieter and less feverish condition. The parallel always held true between himself and his body in the nursery, but he could not know anything about this, and only supposed that it was this open-air sleep that he felt gently stealing over him.
It brought at first strange thoughts that carried him far away to other woods and other fields. While Miss Lake sat beside him eating her mushrooms, his mind was drawn off to some other little folk. But it was always stopped just short of them. He never could quite see their faces. Yet his thoughts continued their search, groping in the darkness; he felt sure he ought to be sharing his adventures with these other little persons, whoever they were; they ought to have been sitting beside him at that very moment, eating mushrooms, combing their wings, comparing the length of their feathers, and snuggling with him into the warm hay.
But they obstinately hovered just outside his memory, and refused to come in and surrender themselves. He could not remember who they were, and his yearnings went unsatisfied up to the stars, as yearnings generally do, while his thoughts returned weary from their search and he yielded to the seductions of the soothing open-air sleep.
The moon, meanwhile, rose higher and higher, drawing a silver veil over the stars. Upon the field the dews of midnight fell silently. A faint mist rose from the ground and covered the flowers in their dim seclusion under the hedgerows. The hours slipped away swiftly.
“Come on, Jimbo, boy!” cried the governess at length. “The moon’s below the hills, and we must be off!”
The boy turned and stared sleepily at her from his nest in the hay.
“We’ve got miles to go. Remember the speed we came at!” she explained, getting up and arranging her wings.
Jimbo got up slowly and shook himself.
“I’ve been miles away,” he said dreamily, “miles and miles. But I’m ready to start at once.”
They looked about for a raised place to jump from. A ladder stood against the other side of the haystack. The governess climbed up it and Jimbo followed her drowsily. Hand in hand they sprang into the air from the edge of the thatched roof, and their wings spread out like sails to catch the wind. It smote their faces pleasantly as they plunged downwards and forwards, and the exhilarating rush of cool air banished from the boy’s head the last vestige of the open-air sleep.
“We must keep up a good pace,” cried the governess, taking a stream and the hedge beyond in a single sweep. “There’s a light in the east already.”
As she spoke a dog howled in a farmyard beneath them, and she shot upwards as though lifted by a sudden gust of wind.
“We’re too low,” she shouted from above. “That dog felt us near. Come up higher. It’s easier flying, and we’ve got a long way to go.”
Jimbo followed her up till they were several hundred feet above the earth and the keen air stung their cheeks. Then she led him still higher, till the meadows looked like the squares on a chess-board and the trees were like little toy shrubs. Here they rushed along at a tremendous speed, too fast to speak, their wings churning the air into little whirlwinds and eddies as they passed, whizzing, whistling, tearing through space.
The fields, however, were still dim in the shadows that precede the dawn, and the stars only just beginning to fade, when they saw the dark outline of the Empty House below them, and began carefully to descend. Soon they topped the high elms, startling the rooks into noisy cawing, and then, skimming the wall, sailed stealthily on outspread wings across the yard.
Cautiously dropping down to the level of the window, they crawled over the sill into the dark little room, and folded their wings.
CHAPTER XII. THE FOUR WINDS
The governess left the boy to his own reflections almost immediately. He spent the hours thinking and resting; going over again in his mind every incident of the great flight and wondering when the real, final escape would come, and what it would be like. Thus, between the two states of excitement he forgot for a while that he was still a prisoner, and the spell of horror was lifted temporarily from his heart.
The day passed quickly, and when Miss Lake appeared in the evening, she announced that there could be no flying again that night, and that she wished instead to give him important instruction for the future. There were rules, and signs, and times which he must learn carefully. The time might come when he would have to fly alone, and he must be prepared for everything.
“And the first thing I have to tell you,” she said, exactly as though it was a schoolroom, “is: Never fly over the sea. Our kind of wings quickly absorb the finer particles of water and get clogged and heavy over the sea. You finally cannot resist the drawing power of the water, and you will be dragged down and drowned. So be very careful! When you are flying high it is often difficult to know where the land ends and the sea begins, especially on moonless nights. But you can always be certain of one thing: if there are no sounds below you — hoofs, voices, wheels, wind in trees — you are over the sea.”
“Yes,” said the child, listening with great attention. “And what else?”
“The next thing is: Don’t fly too high. Though we fly like birds, remember we are not birds, and we can fly where they can’t. We can fly in the ether — —”
“Where’s that?” he interrupted, half afraid of the sound.
She stooped and kissed him, laughing at his fear.
“There is nothing to be frightened about,” she explained. “The air gets lighter and lighter as you go higher, till at last it stops
altogether. Then there’s only ether left. Birds can’t fly in ether because it’s too thin. We can, because — —”
“Is that why it was good for me to get lighter and thinner?” he interrupted again in a puzzled voice.
“Partly, yes.”
“And what happens in the ether, please?” It still frightened him a little.
“Nothing — except that if you fly too high you reach a point where the earth ceases to hold you, and you dash off into space. Weight leaves you then, and the wings move without effort. Faster and faster you rush upwards, till you lose all control of your movements, and then — —”
Miss Lake hesitated a moment.
“And then —— ?” asked the fascinated child.
“You may never come down again,” she said slowly. “You may be sucked into anything that happens to come your way — a comet, or a shooting star, or the moon.”
“I should like a shooting star best,” observed the boy, deeply interested. “The moon frightens me, I think. It looks so dreadfully clean.”
“You won’t like any of them when the time comes,” she laughed. “No one ever gets out again who once gets in. But you’ll never be caught that way after what I’ve told you,” she added, with decision.
“I shall never want to fly as high as that, I’m sure,” said Jimbo. “And now, please, what comes next?”
The next thing, she went on to explain, was the weather, which, to all flying creatures, was of the utmost importance. Before starting for a flight he must always carefully consider the state of the sky, and the direction in which he wished to go. For this purpose he must master the meaning and character of the Four Winds and be able to recognise them in a moment.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 9